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Sean Foley

Mario Ortega Calle

Aleksandra Rafailovic On September 1 2014, the Law on Public Notary came into effect in Serbia. This law was already passed in 2011, but it was postponed twice because of low levels of interest from candidates in taking the exam for this title. As part of the legal and judicial reform programme in Serbia, some of the main reasons for introducing notaries were the need for administrative relief of courts, increase efficiency and greater legal certainty for citizens.

Gabriel Sincu The Romanian economy has a great need for new investments to fulfil its huge growth potential. Whether direct or indirect, foreign or domestic, private or public, investments are key elements in the race to recover the economic gap existing between Romania and the western European countries. With this in mind, the Romanian authorities introduced in 2014 two sets of rules with the clear goal of increasing investment levels and making the country more attractive for new and existing players in the economy.

Henrik Brødholt On October 8 2014 the Norwegian government presented the national Budget for 2015. As expected there were no substantial changes regarding corporate income tax, as the government awaits the finalisation of the tax consideration by the Scheel working party. There were, however, changes to partnership taxation and exit taxation, as well as revisions to the R&D credit. The national Budget has proposed that partners in Norwegian silent partnerships (IS) and limited partners in limited partnerships (KS) shall be disallowed the ability to use tax losses arising from these partnerships as a means of offsetting taxable profit from other sources. The Budget instead allows for tax losses to be carried forward and offset against future profits, and/or a taxable gain from selling shares, in the same IS or KS. The proposed changes are justified by way of increasing equal treatment of different company types, reducing potential abuse and for general tax rules simplification. The proposed amendments may result in significant changes in the structure, timing and total tax costs for IS and KS companies. These rules are proposed to take effect from 2015.

Hans Rudolf Habermache

Peter Dachs Shifting profits and other actions that could erode countries' tax bases have been topics of debate at various international fora and the Davis Tax Committee has been tasked with addressing the issues in a South African context. Treaty shopping is one of the issues considered by the OECD in its base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) reports.

Jelena Zivkovic The Montenegrin government announced a public tender for the sale of 50.75% of share capital of the state-owned arms company Poliex from Berane. The tender was announced in line with the privatisation programme adopted by the Privatisation Council of the Montenegro Government. Poliex is a joint stock company with capital of €2.2 million ($2.7 million) and 389,751 ordinary shares with a nominal value of €5.68 per share.

The scope of the UK Patent Box regime is to be restricted after Germany and the UK reached agreement to reduce the competitive advantages it provides. The restrictions are likely to be extended to other European intellectual property (IP) tax regimes.

The top team of special investigators at UK tax authority Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has gathered £4.15 billion ($6.58 billion) in unpaid tax in 2013/2014, a new record.